The current events in Israel are a subject of study for political scientists around the world, but there are also lessons for Muslims in Russia. As we have already briefly mentioned, the opponents of Netanyahu have managed to agree on the formation of a diverse opposition coalition, which includes Arab Muslims (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=39837). And now let’s take a closer look at how this was achieved, what it might mean, and why many Zionists in Israel and around the world are in shock about it.
The fact is that Zionists, i.e. Jewish Israeli nationalists, have the support of the majority of Jewish and Israeli voters as a whole. It is on the basis of this support that Benjamin Netanyahu has governed Israel since 2009 and plans to continue to do so, because his opponents among the Israeli left and Israeli Arabs are a minority. And as democracy dictates, the majority rules…
But Israel is a parliamentary republic with a multi-party political system. The voices of Israeli Jewish nationalists, who agree only on the idea that Israel should be a Jewish state but disagree on many other issues, are not consolidated in a single party like the Likud under Netanyahu. Instead, they are represented by a conglomerate of very different parties — radical-religious, moderate-religious, centrist, and even «Russian Jews. And it is by uniting them all into a single Jewish-nationalist (right-wing) coalition led by his party that Netanyahu has managed to stay in power until now.
However, on June 2, 2021, something happened that theoretically should not and could not have happened — some of the right-wing parties that were previously part of Netanyahu’s coalition, but were fed up with him trying to end their rule, decided to unite not only with Israeli liberal centrists, but also with leftists and even Muslims, who are rightly called Islamists. And here’s how it looks.
The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has a total of 120 members. The new coalition includes
- 7 members from the «Yamina» («New Right») party led by Naftali Bennett;
- 7 members from the Russian Jewish nationalist party «Our Home Israel» led by Avigdor Lieberman;
- 7 members from the right-wing centrist «New Hope» party led by Gideon Sa’ar;
- 17 members from the Jewish centrist-liberal «Yesh Atid» party led by Yair Lapid;
- 7 members from the Jewish centrist-liberal «Kahol Lavan» party headed by Benny Gantz;
- 7 members from the left-wing Labor party, headed by Meirav Michaeli;
- 7 members from the left-wing Social Democratic Party «Meretz» headed by Nitzan Horowitz;
- 4 members from the Arab-Muslim party «Raam» led by Mansour Abbas (in the photo).
If we look at the composition of this coalition, we can see that the two left-wing parties contribute only 14 mandates and even together with the Arab party they have no chance of forming a coalition, not to mention the fact that Abbas’ Islamists strongly disagree with the left on many issues. But the reverse is also true — without them, the Jewish centrists and the Jewish right, who are tired of Netanyahu, could not remove him either, no matter how much they wanted to avoid the Islamists and the left. Together they collected 61 out of 120 mandates, which means that literally every parliamentary mandate decided the fate of the government and the country.
In this situation, the 4 mandates of the Arab-Muslim party «Raam» also became crucial, although they represent only 4 out of 120 seats in parliament. But it is these 4 mandates that allowed the Arab-Muslim party not only to be present in the government of Israel — for the first time in the history of this country — but also to obtain a number of concessions from its participants through coalition agreements. These concessions include the cessation or suspension of the struggle against the Arab settlements in the Negev, which the Zionists are trying to eliminate because of their illegitimate nature, as well as significant funding for the social development of the country’s Arab population, which will further strengthen their position.
How has all this been achieved despite the dominance of Jewish nationalists, who officially represent the Jewish state of Israel, in politics?
First, because there is a genuine multi-party political system. The threat of its collapse and transition to a dictatorship, which some Jewish nationalists perceived in Netanyahu, led them to ally with their opponents in order to save this multiparty system and benefit from its fruits.
Second, because Israel is a parliamentary republic, not a presidential one. If it were the other way around, and all the power remained in the hands of a Jewish nationalist who received the most votes from the electorate in the first or second round, then in a parliamentary republic the government is formed by a majority of parliamentarians, and many parties sit in parliament. In such a situation, some of them may prefer to ally not with those who are supported by their voters, but with those with whom it is advantageous to form an alliance.
Third, thanks to the political flexibility of Israeli political actors, including the Arab-Muslim party «Raam». Let’s see what this is all about.
The «Balad» party, which for decades was the main representative of the Arabs in Israeli politics, maintained the position of allying with the Israeli left against the Israeli right. On the one hand, this seemed like a principled stance — not to ally with the enemies of Arab Israelis. On the other hand, it led to this party adopting the entire anti-traditionalist agenda of the left on issues such as religion, family and roles within it, and LGBTQ+ rights. Raam’s leader, Mansour Abbas, chose a different path — on the one hand, he declared that he would adhere to conservative positions on social values, but on the other hand, he was willing to interact with Israeli right-wing politicians who were willing to recognize these interests. As a result, as we can see, when relying solely on the Israeli left could not work in the situation, Mansour Abbas’ flexibility, his willingness to work with the Israeli right, paid off. But the opposite is also true, because Netanyahu was only a few votes short of maintaining his government, and those could have been the votes of Raam, with whom he categorically refused to cooperate, opting instead for an escalation of the conflict with Hamas. He hoped to sabotage the formation of an opposition coalition and rally the Jewish parties around him. Unlike him, however, his right-wing opponents showed the flexibility to reach an agreement with Abbas’ party.
If we now extrapolate this situation to Russia, we can see what Muslims could achieve in Russia, and under what conditions. Muslims in Russia make up about the same percentage of the population as Arabs in Israel. If Russia had real freedom and competition among political parties, if it were a parliamentary republic, and if Muslims had independent political forces representing them, they could determine both the composition of the Russian government and its policies. Moreover, this would happen even if Russian politics included parties that honestly disliked Muslims instead of hypocritically pretending to love them, as the Russian government does. As the Israeli example shows, under conditions of fierce competition, even some of these parties would be forced to ally with Muslims and meet their demands. Not out of love, but simply because that’s how a multi-party parliamentary system works.
So, in essence, the answer to the question of what lessons this story holds for Muslims in Russia is this: where there are opportunities for political representation and where the political system allows for the formation of power through coalitions, any significant group, even if marginalized, can have its voice heard in politics. Moreover, sometimes their voice can be decisive. In situations where all power is concentrated in one pair of hands, marginalized groups have no choice but to demonstrate their loyalty and hope for reciprocity. And in the vast majority of cases, these hopes are not fulfilled.